Bandages
by Dark Flamingo
Summary: He'd curl up and stare at his ruined skin and let his bandages drip to the ground. He'd think of the red eyed stranger who had slaughtered his clan and listen to the laughter rip from his own throat. Because Sasuke was in love with the idea of Itachi


_Hmm... I wrote a Sasuke story. Interesting. Anyways, I hope I got him acurately, because I've never written him before, and I haven't quite seen enough episodes with Sasuke (which doesn't sound believable, even to me) to get a good feel of him. Anyways, I hope you're reading of this isn't entirely unpleasent._

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Even ninja would find it disgusting, the rotted flesh, the pale innards and the crawling insects nibbling away at the eyeballs. Sasuke, Sasuke was, for the briefest moment that was gone before he could root himself to it, horrified, a expression crossed his face that he'd never like anyone to see, and few ever would, for only the dead, and only Itachi would ever be blessed with the image of a horrified, terrified, self-loathing Sasuke.

Disgust slips to stony-calm, a swipe at the face, relaxing the muscles, watching the centipedes crawl curiously in and out of the nooks and crannies stabbed into the corpses. His eyes, once sharingan, now inky black that almost, but not quite, reflects the bodies in front of him. Sasuke hates his eyes, hates them and for that smashed every mirror in his house, in his clan complex, and the same reason why he flinches and looks away as fast as possible whenever he passes a mirror, because no matter what colour his eyes are, onyx black, or complex blood red it reminds him of Itachi, and he doesn't want to see Itachi in himself, because they're _not the same_.

Stone calm eventually cracks and a strange feeling eats at his insides and he can't help it when his mouth curves upwards in a smile, a gruesome grin that he fights back as best he can, the laughter gurgling in his throat, in his mind. Because that isn't him, that's too much like Itachi, the laughter, the laughter. Those weaker than him, dying at another's hands, the poor shinobi who'd never amount to anything because they're _dead_, those thoughts, that run parallel with Itachi, with how Itachi views the world from his bloody eyes, never black, not anymore, those thoughts aren't his, and he wishes Itachi would get out of his head.

And when Naruto smashes the ground with all he's got, enough to throw Sakura off her feet and to send Kakashi into the nearest tree out of ANBU reflex, Sasuke can laugh, and the feeling of relief and bile are ones he's grateful for, because when the ground splits noisily and the trees tumble and Sakura screams out of alarm in a way a ninja never should, Sasuke doesn't have to worry about being heard when he laughs, when bitter, bitter joy tear through his body and his eyes flicker in a strange way, a way to scare even his brother away, though neither will know this until later, he can think irrational thoughts and thank Naruto, for being the hot-headed idiot that he is, giving Sasuke the chance to give away to the inhuman thoughts rocketing through his head.

Every morning Sasuke would go through a routine that ran parallel to his nighttime routine, one that orbited around the action of taking a fistful of pills to knock him out for the night, and in the morning Sasuke would take a painkiller and unwrap his bandages. They never came loose in the night; save for a few loose ends around his ankles, and more out of habit then anything else he always had a stock of fresh bandages, ready and waiting on his bedside table. Showers weren't top priority, and since the dirt and blood from the training grounds had been engraved in his skin since the age of seven, smell was never an issue, and usually his hair had passed through the oily stage of dirty, and rested upon numbness.

But in the morning, no matter what he'd carefully, delicately, remove his bandages with the same care one gives to removing stitches and sit bare on his floor staring at his limbs. His skin was a scattering of raw skin, burns and scratches and scars. All of which, could be traced back to Itachi. His personal training was done quietly, privately, off in the forests outside the city limits, with the trees and the rocks and the endless stream of his thoughts, burning tracks in his brain as he danced through his routine with numb perfection.

Sasuke thought only of revenge, and perfection, accomplishing the impossible feat of surpassing his idol and his enemy. Sasuke was in love with the idea of Itachi. The unbeatable, cold force driving him onwards, he never thought of the road after victory, only the road leading towards it, no one truly understood how he felt, not even Kakashi, for he wasn't an avenger, he was a fighter, and fighters had no linger thought or regrets, fighters had no beliefs.

Sasuke believed in Itachi, he believed in hating him, and he did. As sure as the sun would rise on his dreamless nights and as sure as he would remove his bandages, Sasuke would hate and chase his brother, his childhood idol, his sole love interest, because Sasuke only fantasized about the defeat of the heartless bastard who had killed his brother and slaughtered his clan and wore red eyes and traveled with an aloft manner and killed without thought and could look his younger brother in the eye and tell him to hate him with everything he had and to tell his younger brother, who had once upon a time truly loved him, to search him out and kill him.

Sasuke was in love with the idea of hatred, the anger, the disgust and contempt. The idea of staring at his pale, pale skin, his pale ruined skin and wanting to ripe out his eyes every time he caught a glance of himself in a mirror, he loved to curl his fingers around his toes, which were blistered and dirtied and staring at his arms and thinking of Itachi and loving the resentment, agony and despair that ran through his blood, that would bubble and boil and the laughter that would rip him apart because he'd never be able to kill Itachi because that just couldn't happen.

Because on the days when he'd out of spite only take one sleeping pill and lie in bed for the longest time before sleep clawed at his eyes like the kunai he sometimes would hold up to his sharingan and think about plunging it through his eyeball, maybe both, but then, how would he see Itachi? How would he kill him, when he'd be blind? On those nights, when whether or not he'd dream was up in the air, usually came down on Itachi.

Sasuke was an avenger, and avengers had nostalgic thoughts to overcome most else. And at night, when he gave his mind a break and let his body sleep without the medicine imposed coma he usually subjected himself to, Sasuke would dream of Itachi. The Itachi with black eyes that were deep and thoughtful and kind but usually blank and distant. The Itachi he loved, and upon waking he want nothing more than to rip off his bandages and never put them back on.

But he did, eventually, because all wounds, mental and physical needed time to heal, and for Sasuke the moment inbetween bandages, when his skin suffered no more pressure than his urgent dark eyes, that was the time for healing. And one day, he'd have no need for the bandages Itachi had given him.


End file.
